A Hesitant Step
by the-speed-reader
Summary: And that mere thought, one that had only come from the darkest parts of her mind, causes her to move. She takes one hesitant step, then another, before slowly and surely coming to rest before him. Her knees bend almost against her own will and her hands reaches out, cupping the glass and brushing against his fingers.


_So I was reading over my previous stories for fun and noticed that a lot of the time I write about Skye and her troubles from Ward's point of view. I had written about her getting drunk to avoid her own problems; and thus I switched the tables._

_This is the story of the time that Skye helped Ward with his drunken problems, not the other way around._

* * *

"_Only people who are capable of loving strongly an also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them_." -Leo Tolstoy

* * *

The moment she found him, buried against the far wall staring stoically at the pale glass in his hand, she froze, her hip bumping the doorway in a sudden attempt to stop, to keep him from noticing her. It worked, at least for that split moment where her breath caught in her throat and her eyelids flew closed as if to break away from the scene before her. Because she had never wished to see him like this – on the edge of breaking, yet unable to finally move over the edge.

Her mind debates whether or not to move away, to pretend she isn't seeing her all too fearless leader nearly shattered in his emotions along the open floor plan of the training area. The others are gone, having retreated to their small bunks before the hours had ticked into darkness. But she had gotten up, merely for a glass of water. Not to see this. Not to see _him_.

Her heart was pounding in her chest and a half-choked bubble of air was caught in her throat; he wasn't sitting on the never ending layer of black, threatening to break. Because she knew that expression – it was one that she had faced in the mirror many times herself. It was one that had haunted her nightmares, one she had confessed her demons to and one that she had to false pleasure of meeting when the nights grew longer and longer.

And that mere thought, one that had only come from the darkness parts of her mind, causes her to move. She takes one hesitant step, then another, before slowly and surely coming to rest before him. Her knees bend almost against her own will and her hands reaches out, cupping the glass and brushing against his fingers.

He doesn't move, doesn't even blink as she carefully takes the deadly glass away from him, setting on the ground beside him and pushing it away with her pinkie until it is far enough so he cannot see it. His eyes are blank, unfocused when he finally blinks at her, his throat bobbing in a rather poor attempt on hiding the slippery evidence that he, the toughest man she knew, wanted to _cry_.

"Hey," she whispers, her voice rather unsettling her when she speaks. So she clears her throat and tries again: "Ward."

His name from her lips seems to wake his drunken soul a bit and his head perks up a bit, meeting her straight in the eyes. His eyes, for once, don't have their walls up; they only have a pure, rarely seen emotion that she had only seen in herself.

His voice is raspy when he speaks. "Sk-ye?" The words are garbled, but she cannot bring herself to even bring the smallest of laughs to the quite noise around the pair of them.

Instead she settles for a huff that escapes her lips before immediately becoming parched and dry, settling into the heat. "It's me," she replies softly, not wanting to make him do anything he might regret in the morning. "How long have you been here?"

Her question is one that he seems to have difficulty processing; his head tilts slightly to one side. "Du-nno. Maybe a c-ouple hours."

His mentality and speaking ability is one of a small child at the moment, so she finally settles on the final question of the night, one that she hopes would help him. She toys with the words carefully being opening her mouth. "Do you – do you need help getting into your room?"

There's a poorly hidden glance at her, as if his mind is wondering why in the hell she is helping him. But just when she thinks he's going to resist her, a nod appears in her vision and her lips curl into a slight movement; it isn't a smile and it isn't a frown. It's something in between, something caught in the brilliant motions of light and dark. It's nothing more than a motion, yet as he struggles to his feet and she wraps her arms around him, helping him find his unusually clumsy feet in the dark, he glances at her. She pretends not to notice, but freezes when she feels a sudden hotness by her ear.

"You're pretty," he mutters, voice slurred and clearly not thinking. "Real-ly pretty."

She keeps her voice steady. She's been around drunken men before; Miles had been a not-so-recovering alcoholic when they met. But she's never been around a man that she trusted with every inch of her soul when he was drunk. She doesn't know how he will react.

She's suddenly scared. "Ward," she hisses when he stumbles. "Let's just get you to your room."

It's a long process; his room is the furthest away from everyone else's, hidden in one of the lower levels of the plane. They stumble there, but within barley short of ten minutes they're standing outside his door with her struggling to remember to combinations to the keypad that he had installed for privacy. It's a five digit combo, one that had thousands of possibilities. She blows a piece of hair out of her face in frustration, just in time to feel fingertips on her neck.

Her whole body stiffens. "Grant," her voice says, low. "What's your combo?"

That seems to do the trick; his head lulls as he thinks, tapping his fingers absentmindedly along his side. It keeps his focus away from her, at least for the moment. Then his mouth parts, brushing the top of her head. "The day we met," he whispers dramatically.

_September 24, 2013_. The date flashes through her mind in an instant, along with a sudden pain in her heart. But she shakes her head, typing in the numbers: _92413_. The door is pushed aside in a slight brush of air and then she's pulling him inside, trying to keep his fingers from making patterns on her neck.

She pushes him away from her and he stumbles onto his bed, falling sideways. After a moment of silence, with her hand to her heart and his heavy breathing, she realizes that he had fallen asleep.

There's an escape of breath from her mouth and she can finally breathe again. _He's alright. I'm alright. He's going to be fine_.

She stays there for a bit, settling into a wayward chair by his beside and watching him. His breath is much like that of a sleeper that never really knew the happiness off a goodnight's sleep; she knows the patterns. She's heard the heavy football of footprints that he failed to shake when he had wondered the halls at night, unable to sleep. He's a classified isonomic, same as her – except her best ideas, her brilliant codes came in those days when the sun is long gone and the moon is high.

It's been forty minutes since he had fallen asleep when a long thought strikes in her mind, igniting a trail of fire with others. _Why had he nearly drunk himself to unconsciousness?_

That one thought keeps her up for hours, until the sun is barely rising over the shore line. There's a view out of his window that she had long since been staring out; there's nothing but pure water out there, but somehow it emits a sense of tranquility that she hasn't felt in a while.

Around six am, she falls asleep in the chair, with one of his sweatshirts that she had grabbed from his dresser covering her.

She dreams of a world where neither of them were shattered.

And when he wakes, hung-over and dazed, she's long since gone. He never knows how he got into his room, remembered his combination in a drunk haze. But he only shrugs it off.

She, on the other hand, doesn't forget.

* * *

_There you have it._


End file.
